Such honeycomb structures are generally designed with hexagonal honeycomb cells in cross section. The sharp sealing edges that cooperate with them are also known as sealing fins. It is required of the honeycomb structure that it be able to yield upon making contact with a sharp sealing edge by deformation and/or material ablation and in no way damage the sharp sealing edge. Usually, sufficiently temperature-resistant as well as oxidation and corrosion-resistant metal is used as the material for the cell walls of the honeycomb cells, preferably one based on nickel. In order to provide a sufficient yielding given the relatively high strength and hardness of this material, the wall thicknesses of the cell walls must be chosen to be extremely thin. This primarily limits the manufacturing possibilities for the honeycomb structure. As a rule, preshaped metal sheets are the starting product, being joined together and applied to a substrate by soldering. The honeycomb structure so formed must then be lathe-turned or ground to measure, which in turn can lead to problems due to the slight wall thicknesses. Besides cell deformations, sharp burr can result, which can only be removed at great expense. The lifetime of the thin cell walls is limited by oxidation and corrosion attack, among other things. Erosion is also a problem in this connection. Finally, cracks, holes and other types of damage can result.
It is also known how to improve the yielding capacity of a honeycomb structure by inclining the honeycomb cells in the rotational, or circumferential direction, rather than the radial direction. But this has consequences for the flow engineering and drawbacks in the fabrication technology.